Building Chatbots Without The Chat.

For a few years now, my good friend Ulrich Sossou has been an inspiration in software. Here’s what Ulrich recently shared:

I think what will make the difference is the experience. The bots don’t even have to be intelligent. What will make the difference is the ability to quickly deliver information or perform a transaction with the least amount of human input.

People are going to be very disappointed because every technologist is dreaming of the day the machines take over (or having nightmares about that day). But realistically, the day humans are going to have a natural conversation with a chatbot won’t happen in the next few years.

Ulrich is probably right. The days humans can realistically have a natural conversation with a machine won’t happen in the next few years.

A chatbot therefore, should not aspire to conduct conversation nor should it aspire to be quasi-robotic. It is software designed for proximity: technology whose aim it is to quickly deliver information or perform a transaction with less human input than via a traditional GUI (graphical user interface).

With that in mind, we can consider whether our current software could be more beneficial — not conversational — to our customers were it available in closer proximity to them.

The most exciting thing about the chatbot era from a creative standpoint, is that language and buttons, as opposed to visual design and effect, are used to create the character of the product, and this is a wholly new opportunity for interface designers to not be bound by the visual dimension but rather to expose their creativity to a new challenge: language.